What I learned from not having a Smartphone and why I’ll never be without one again

On Thursday 26th May 2017 my smartphone gave up the ghost, it suffered from what’s called the LG bootloop , the only thing I knew was I didn’t have a phone. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how much I would miss it over the next few days.

Now don’t get me wrong I tried everything to fix it, coz I love fixing stuff, but to no avail, it was knackered. I ordered a new phone straight away but with it being bank holiday weekend I knew it wasn’t going to arrive until Tuesday. WTF!!

So I had the prospect of the whole weekend without a means to communicate which meant I couldn’t:

call anyone

keep up to date with social channels

take pictures

shoot video

record notes

look at and check on stuff when I wanted to

I was lost to the outside world

Now this might seem a little dramatic and you might be thinking “come on it’s just a phone” and you’d be right, unless you’ve been without one for more than a few days then, it’s more than just a phone, it’s a way of life.

The thing I wasn’t prepared for was the time I couldn’t spend on social channels. Yes I have a Chromebook and I have a computer but I don’t/can’t carry them around with me. This meant I could no longer be spontaneous I couldn’t see what everyone was up to and in my job that’s a prerequisite.

So how does that affect a business?

Well the first thing is the isolation felt, it’s like you’re not part of the ‘gang’ anymore because you don’t have a voice, you do of course it’s just very limited. The time it takes to logon, even to a Chromebook, means that the moment is lost, gone forever.

As someone who runs a business based on digital marketing a Smartphone is just as necessary as my accountant or website, its crucial to my business and not having it, even over the weekend really did bring it home to me just how much we are reliant on our Smartphones for just about everything we do these days, we really are a connected society.

So what has this taught me?

Well the first thing is always, and I mean always, have a spare charged and ready to go, it doesn’t have to be anything flash just so long as you can connect to the web and make and take calls you’ll be fine because you never know when you’ll need it.

It has also taught me just how reliant we are on them and how integrated into our lives they have become, don’t believe me, throw yours in a draw just for today and I bet you can’t last more than a couple of hours without getting it out and looking at it, checking to see what’s happening and then realising just how important a tool they really are. Go on I dare you!

It has also taught me that as a business I would find it really hard to function properly, I check accounts from social to banking, and I speak to clients and associates through messenger, email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and SMS every day. You could say that my business runs from this little device on a daily basis.

I was lucky that it died on the weekend if it has been on a Monday goodness knows what I would have done.

So, next time someone says to you “why do you look at that phone all the time?” you’ll be able to say with confidence “it’s my lifeline to the outside world.”

The Smartphone Era is over – or so ‘they’ say. ‘They’ obviously haven’t been without their phone for a few days!
In some ways, I think it’s because the phone has become better at doing what we want (I need glasses to read most things – but I can read my new phone’s display without them) and there are other things where we have adapted our way of doing things to fit the way the phone works (nice big buttons to tap). I’m incline to think we’ve a long way to go together, yet.

Keith

I agree David I think it’s only getting going. We use them for so much these days I just don’t see how anyone, especially business people, could do without it.

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